“Forgive me, madam,” Brandon interceded gloweringly. “But she already has.”
The two men pummeled her with information then, back and forth, rapid, lethal, as if they were delivering blows. “You have until April to benefit from His Majesty’s largesse. Then it is expected that you shall retire to some private house of your own,” Norfolk explained in a dry monotone.
“I have no such dwelling,” Katherine countered.
“You have until spring to find one.”
“On what am I to live if I do?”
“As you are not queen, you no longer need a queen’s household,” Brandon said.
“No matter what he calls her, I am queen. My husband can place me where he likes, so long as I have a confessor, a physician, and Maria for comfort.”
“You shall no longer be called queen, madam.”
“While I live, I shall call myself so, as will those faithful few, no matter their number, who remain around me.” Her tone, full of aching pride, bore only a slight tremor.
Jane longed to cry out that she would be honored to be among them, but this was not the time. Yet again her bitterness toward Anne Boleyn grew.
“Am I to know where I am to be moved, since my circumstances are to be so swiftly reduced?”
“If you refuse to make your own arrangements, my lady, there is a place called Buckden,” Brandon coolly revealed, picking a piece of lint from his massive puffed velvet sleeve.
“Any further east and I would be in the sea,” Katherine exaggerated drily of the twelfth-century Buckden Palace in Cambridgeshire.
Jane could hear Maria de Salinas begin to weep at the rapidly declining situation.
A fortnight later, the conversation continued to chill Jane as she and nearly all of the others were released from service to the queen and sent home.
The drawn litter in which she rode four months later, accompanied by Sir Francis Bryan, rattled and swayed along the twisted, rutted road back to Wolf Hall. A very different Jane Seymour from the one who had left clutched the Spanish coin once given to her by the queen as she watched her childhood home come slowly into view.
“It was good of you to accompany me, Sir Francis,” Jane said shakily, feeling her heart beat more swiftly for the disappointed looks she knew lay ahead.
“’Twas on my way to my estates. I really should see my wife now that I have one before I depart for France,” he said cavalierly.
The king was sending Francis again as an envoy to France in order to shore up relations with King Francis I, who had been caught unaware when Henry left the Church. Francis Bryan, considered an expert in diplomacy now, was to do damage control for Henry.
Jane had never met Francis’s wife, Philippa, since she remained at their country home in Surrey and did not come to court, but she knew Francis had found happiness. Marriages, children, even dalliances were passing Jane by as she neared her twenty-sixth birthday.
“Yet you do, at least, have a partner, which is more than I can say for myself,” Jane said.
He rubbed his bearded jaw thoughtfully as the stuffy litter continued to rattle and sway, the heavily laden trunks bouncing behind them.
“I am sorry there were no stellar options presented for you at court, Jane. I had hopes.”
“Faith can be blind, but most men are not,” she replied with a sigh. “There has only ever been one person in my life who has seen me differently, and that was a long time ago.”
“Ah, yes, young Master Dormer.”
“He must be well married now by his own ambitious mother.”
“As it happens,” Francis said nonchalantly when the litter was brought to a rest in the cobblestone courtyard of Wolf Hall, “Master Dormer is yet unmarried.”
She glanced at him as a servant approached with a stepping stool. She tried to keep the tremor of surprise from her voice. “How do you know that?”
“We favored few have our ways,” he said with a diplomatic smile. “People gossip about those who seek the sovereign’s favor, and Lady Dormer has been prominent among that group through the years.”
“I see.”
“He is her only son, if memory serves.”
“Yes,” Jane confirmed. “One accustomed to being indulged as well as indulging himself, from a very early age. I was done with that, and with him, long ago.”
“I remember that he might have taken some liberty with you, but at least he was interested enough to tell you he meant to marry you.”
“How could you know that?” Jane shot back, feeling defensive suddenly. She did not want to open old wounds.
Francis scratched his beard awkwardly as he gazed out the window. “I would have you ask yourself, have you the luxury to be aloof with a man who once cared for you so deeply that he proposed marriage? Especially if you might, after all this time, still care for him a little?”
The question hit her as a servant opened the little door and a rush of fresh air swirled around them. How, she wondered, did he know any of that? But when she stepped onto the gravel drive, it was into her sister’s waiting arms. Their conversation quickly ended in the surprise of seeing Elizabeth after so long.
“What are you doing here?” Jane wept, feeling the full press of her sister’s sixth child between them.
“I came for a visit as soon as I heard you were returning from your exile. Was it awful there at the More?” she asked as Jane held her out at arm’s length.
Her once stunningly pretty sister had aged with the years and the strain that repeated childbirth had placed upon her once small and delicate frame. Elizabeth’s face was slim and drawn, and her beautiful blue eyes had dimmed. Jane had always envied Elizabeth. Until today. She now wore a dress of amber cloth ornamented with ivory lace, which paled in comparison to Jane’s rich court-designed gown with its intricate plum-colored embroidery and fashionable slashed sleeves.
“Sir Francis,” Elizabeth said, curtsying respectfully to their cousin. It occurred to Jane then that Elizabeth would never have the same kinship with Francis that she shared with him after years together at court. There was a strange, almost imperceptible little turn of the tide then, and she sensed that the balance of power had shifted between the two sisters. “Will you be staying with us?” Elizabeth asked him hopefully.
“I was planning on your mother’s grace for only a night or two before I set off to Surrey.”
“I know she will be honored. Especially if you bring us news from court,” she said excitedly. “Everyone is wondering all about the new queen.”
“Katherine shall ever be King Henry’s only queen,” Jane said defensively as her parents appeared at the half-timbered, gabled entrance to Wolf Hall.
The world tipped on its axis then.
She remembered their disappointment in her before she had left home and felt the sting still. That sensation would live within her always, no matter what glamour she had experienced at court. Knowing not what else to do, Jane curtsied before them, but her knees were weak. It was her mother who brought her up with a surprisingly gentle hand.
“Welcome home, my dear.”
Those unexpected words, filled with sincerity, hit her like a knife wound. For a moment, she could not think. She could never have expected what happened next.
“Dear girl,” her mother said as she reached out to Jane, who had telltale tears in her eyes. “You are looking fit after your ordeal in the More. Was it too dreadful?” she asked.
“’Twas not dreadful at all. At least not until the last days,” she amended, not wanting to think of the kindhearted queen, noble to the end, though she was intentionally separated by the vindictive king from her only child. Jane might have seen fleeting sparks of humanity in King Henry over the years—and softened toward him in those moments—but she still could not relate to him. Perhaps he deserved Anne Boleyn and the tumultuous existence he had created for himself. “By God’s grace, I learned a great deal in my time with the queen.”
“You can see our Jane has matured,” said her
father appraisingly as he reached out and drew her into an embrace that was as unexpected as her mother’s kind and thoughtful words.
Jane tried very hard not to go rigid in his arms, but it was difficult. “Thomas wrote to us that the new Queen Anne causes quite a stir when she rides out in public. The loyalty of the people seems to have remained with Queen Katherine, whether she gave him a son or not,” said her mother.
“Which, no doubt, is why she has been exiled even farther, to Buckden,” Jane added. “If the king could see her sent back to Spain, I am quite certain he would.”
“Well, Anne Boleyn is queen now,” Francis said philosophically, almost as if someone influential might be listening. “And we all must needs honor her if we intend to remain in the king’s good favor.”
Francis Bryan had known a remarkable rise under Henry VIII, and, by extension, so had the entire Seymour family. They let the matter of loyalty drop.
They dined early that night in honor of Sir Francis, Jane’s mother laying a splendid table complete with delectable roast lark and herbed pheasant. But the house seemed empty without Edward and Thomas, as she so fondly remembered them at Wolf Hall. They sat by glowing lamplight, often in silence now, interrupted only by the sound of silver hitting china, or her father’s loud chewing and occasional extended belches. There was no music, which Jane had grown accustomed to at the king’s palaces, and there were far fewer servants to attend them. Tonight, away from the elegance of the royal court, the soup was cold, and the lark sauce bitter. Her former fear and awe of Margery and John Seymour faded with each swallow.
After the meal was over, Jane and Francis took a stroll beneath the rich, golden orb of moonlight glowing on the meadow, bordered by cultivated yews and sweet-scented, newly blooming viburnums.
“I have a confession to make,” he suddenly said. “’Tis quite a dreadful thing, too.”
Jane could see by his strained expression that this was not a jest and that he was troubled by whatever he had withheld. “I could say it was not truly my fault, as it was forgotten in the melee of the accident.” He pointed to his eye patch, as if that were necessary. “I have not worn the armor since then. But the bitter and slightly ironic truth of the matter is that when my man took the cuirass out last month for polishing, something I had stashed inside dropped from it. ’Twas a letter, Jane.” He held it out to her now. “William Dormer had bid me to give it to you.”
“He gave you a letter for me all those years ago?” She nearly choked on the question. This seemed so incredibly impossible and cruel.
“Pray, forgive me, but it is the truth. I swear to you by all that is holy, for the severity of my head injury that day, and the loss of my eye, I did not even remember it until the letter was brought to me a few days ago. Then, slowly, the pieces of my memory began to fit together. I tried to tell you earlier today, but I found I needed some liquid courage in the form of your father’s Dutch wine before I could speak of it.”
She was afraid to take the letter from him. Afraid to see the written words. She had spent so many years trying to heal from her single adolescent fantasy of love—to mature beyond the loss of it. Instinctively, Jane crumpled it up and shoved it into the fabric of her deep bell sleeve.
“Will you not read it?” Francis cautiously asked.
“I know not,” she said truthfully. “What would be the point?”
“Love?”
“We were children.”
“Is there an age requirement with matters of the heart?”
“Good sense would strongly suggest there should be,” Jane countered drily.
“’Tis true you were both young, Jane, but his words of explanation ring true, and, if I may say, living at court most of my life, I am something of an expert on courtly plays at love. This does not qualify.”
“Well, it matters not now anyway,” she decided. “’Twas too long ago, and I am quite certain he has known the affection of many women since his few fleeting moments with me.”
Her voice, like her knees, trembled as she sank onto a painted wooden bench beneath a pergola smothered in violet wisteria blooms, feeling as if the very life had just been knocked out of her, no matter how stoic she had trained herself to be.
“You must understand, my dear, that lust is not love.”
“Tell that to the queen. The true queen.”
His brows merged above the black eye patch, and he let out a heavy sigh. “Oh, now you have gone and berated my niece. You know I have long been a champion of Queen Anne.”
“So has anyone who wished to remain a recipient of the king’s largesse. I personally found it all distasteful, and I am glad to be away from it.”
There was a long silence as the first strains of the night music, headed by a chorus of crickets, began slowly to rise to a crescendo. “Yet the question does thus become, what will you do without a court appointment or a proper suitor if you refuse to listen to him?”
“William Dormer did not press a suit with my family, or with me,” she countered defensively, rising again on unsteady legs.
“’Twas not for want of trying, or lack of desire, sweetheart.”
The voice, richer than Francis Bryan’s, yet still familiar, came suddenly, and Jane felt as if she had been hit yet again, a blow from which she could not easily recover. Her gaze darted swiftly in the deepening darkness. When it finally landed on a tall form drawing forth from the shadows, she could see by his eyes that the trim and elegantly dressed man, after all these years, was William Dormer.
“You have not changed at all, Jane,” William said calmly as he approached.
There was just the slightest hint of a smile dimpling his cheeks, tanned and healthy looking from frequent riding and hunting. Jane tried to step back as he stood before her, but Francis was there like a steadying brace. In the last pale burst of mellow sunlight, William’s face shimmered. It was chiseled now, the well-defined face of an adult, with an air of grace that neither money nor a title, but only goodness, could provide. He wore no beard, and his clean-shaven face only added to his elegant beauty.
So like a Roman statue, Jane thought, envious of how magnificent his face was compared to her own plain visage.
“Would that I had been changed enough to match your transformation,” she replied haltingly, unable to take her eyes from him for the complex memories that seeing him conjured. These last years apart were like an eternity.
She was certain he had no idea what a force he had already been in her life.
“You know perfectly well your beauty suited me.”
She wanted desperately then to quip something about his lack of resolve in convincing her, but she managed to hold her tongue.
“I hope you will forgive this small deception conjured by Sir Francis and me, but when he told me that, through circumstance, you never received my letter, I knew no other course to take but this one.”
“You might have let sleeping dogs lie,” she replied, not meaning it.
“I could sooner have cut out my own tongue, once I learned fate had not allowed me a proper hearing with you.”
“If you will both forgive me,” Francis awkwardly interrupted their exchange.
Jane and William looked at him as if they had totally forgotten he was there. She knew that she certainly had.
“… but I find I fancy a draught of ale, and then ’tis early to bed for me. Youth does not live quite so close to my bones as it once did.”
After he had gone, Jane turned back, still uncertain whether she was angry or happy to see William after all this time. In spite of what she had once felt for him, there was so much water under the bridge. Yet the memory of them together in that field would never quite leave her mind.
“I was sorry to hear about the queen. Last time he was home, your brother Edward said she had grown very fond of you.”
“And I, her.” Jane looked away.
It was simply not natural to be so drawn to a man one barely knew.
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
“Will you?” he asked.
“And what would be the point, Master Dormer?”
“Ah, so formal are we now, when once we were nearly lovers?” He reached out to touch the huge bell of her sleeve. The connection had power behind it. “The point, to my way of thinking, at least, is that I have never forgotten about you, never stopped wishing it had ended differently between us.”
“Oh, William, pray do not speak of such things.”
She turned away, but he brought her face back with a gentle, cupped hand.
“I’ll not make any excuses for what happened. I won’t say that I was young, or vulnerable to the power of my awkward body that day.”
“I would not wish to hear it.” Jane cringed, vanquishing the image yet again.
“Then I shall speak of it no more. But I cannot be silenced in the same way about my heart, since that part of me which you captured so long ago has never, nor shall ever, belong to anyone else.”
“It has been years since we have even seen each other, William. How can you utter such words? Time has changed me. You do not know me any longer.” Jane felt desperate and frightened at the prospect of what he was saying. There was an impossibility swirling around the two of them like bees to a rose as they gazed at each other, remembering some things and trying to forget others.
“Jane, please, listen to me. These past years, I have been trotted out to as many young ladies as there are likely at court, and all of them have come up short in comparison to you.”
She chuckled, but it was a bitter sound. “Clearly you needed your memory examined along with your eyes. Do you not see what a plain, quiet woman I am? That will never change. If one has no beauty, at least she must have a fortune, and I have neither.”
“I am told I have enough of both to negate the issue.” He smiled wryly, hoping only to make her laugh.
“I speak seriously, William,” she countered, trying to remain aloof.
“I know,” he said, smiling at her indulgently. “Did you not ever hear that beauty is in the eye of the beholder?”
“Plato clearly had not seen me when he said that.”
To her surprise, William laughed. “You see, that is what I have always been drawn to about you. Yours is not just wit for wit’s sake. ’Tis fire inside you waiting to burst forth like a great volcano, and I have long hoped to be there when it does.” He took a step nearer, until their chests were touching. Then, without asking, William pressed a kiss gently onto her cheek as if the years apart had been no more than a day. He dared to hold the connection between them as his arms encircled her and he drew her fully into an embrace. Jane could neither think nor breathe for the foreign, desirable sensations it conjured.